


once the coast is clear

by persephx



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: (AND SHE GETS ONE DAMMIT), (i'm not tagging the other relationships because the main is glimbow, Bow is a good friend, But there's also:, Canon Compliant, F/M, Glimbow-centric, Glimmer Needs a Hug, Post Season 5, Scorfuma, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Season 5 Spoilers, Traumatized Glimmer, adora is a good friend, after writing this i realize that there's not a lot of glimbow really, also a tiny little bit of the relationship between glimmer and her dad because I missed that in s5, but she good, but they are very very minor, catra is... catra tbh, catradora, glimmer-centric, i can't stop writing glimbow, just glimmer dealing with this so, seamista - Freeform, spinnetossa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25074793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephx/pseuds/persephx
Summary: The Rebellion has defeated The Horde, and, to celebrate, they have a party. Glimmer, the Queen of Bright Moon, can't bring herself to celebrate.(( this has nothing to do with my other glimbow fic, bright stars, even though the timing is kinda simmilar ))
Relationships: Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Glimbow - Relationship, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (( this has nothing to do with my other glimbow fic, bright stars, even though the timing is kinda simmilar, they are two different 'universes', I guess ))

After everything that happened, a party is the last thing Glimmer wants, but it seems like a good thing to do after defeating Horde Prime and saving Etheria, so she agrees. They don’t even bother to return to Bright Moon, they settle in a field nearby and the party starts right then, right there. Everyone is invited to the event, no matter the kingdom, no matter who they are. Anyone who wants to celebrate the defeat of the Horde and the win of the Rebellion is free to join them, and they sure do. Soon, there are so many people that counting them would give her a nightmare.

They are safe now, and still, Glimmer can’t stop shaking.

She’s leaning against a wall, away from the center of the party, a.k.a. Catra and Adora. From her position, she can see everything that is happening, which makes her feel just a little bit better.

She can see Sea-Hawk dancing, and Mermista pretending she’s embarrassed at him. Even from afar she can see how smitten Mermista really is with him. _It’s cute,_ she can’t help but think, _that she still tries to maintain the façade_.

If she moves her eyes to the right, she can see Adora and Catra dancing. Well, they are either dancing on making each other promises of what’s to come once they are alone. She can’t only imagine what they must have felt, pining for their best friend for most of their lives and only finding relief now.

Looking at Bow, who is dancing with Scorpia and Perfuma next to them, she realizes she doesn’t have to imagine it.

She’s known Bow for a long time. Sure, not as much as Adora and Catra had known each other, but they’d also never tried to kill the other, so they at least have that. They had exchanged “I love you’s” but they hadn’t talked much since Prime had been defeated. Not really.

She forces herself to look away, and her eyes fall to her father. Her father. He’s talking with her aunt, but they don’t seem angry. She can’t imagine what it must have been like, for either of them. She’d been so young when her father disappeared that she didn’t remember much of him, but her mom and her aunt definitely did. Her mother had died without knowing her dad was alive, and maybe… maybe that had been for the better. She couldn’t imagine what her mom would have felt like if she’d found out that her dad had spent all those years alone in Beast Island. She would have blamed herself, that’s for sure.

Glimmer closes her eyes and slowly lets out the air in her lungs. Then, she breathes again. It hasn’t been long enough since her mother’s death that it doesn’t hurt anymore.

She’s standing there, with her eyes closed and a party going around her, when someone touches her cheek. Suddenly, the noises of the party disappear. There’s only the feel of someone’s hand in her cheek. The hand is cold. Metal-like. They end sharply. Her breathing stops. Seconds turn into hours. She can only think of cold, green eyes. Soulless. Looking right at her as they show her her friends’ deaths. 

She pushes the person away before she even opens her eyes. Only when she does, she sees King Micah of Bright Moon looking at her with wide eyes and an alarmed expression. For a moment, his dark eyes seem bright green, but then the illusion breaks, his image going back to normal. Glimmer is still shaking.

“Are you okay, Glimmer?” her father asks slowly.

She hates the way he’s looking at her. They are strangers, really, they don’t know each other yet, they haven’t had the opportunity, and she hates that too. Her eyes travel to Hordak, awkwardly hoovering over Entrapta; they will have to deal with that, too. She can’t look at him without feeling nauseous, so she looks away, just for now.

“I’m fine.” She gives him a smile. It’s a fake one, but she’s gotten better at faking since she met Adora, and he doesn’t know her well enough to know the difference between that and a real smile. Still, she relents. “Just tired.”

She doesn’t like the way he’s looking at her, but she maintains her smile. “If you need something…” He seems so unsure that it breaks her heart. At the same time, she doesn’t know how she would make him feel better, she’s unsure herself.

“I will,” she answers, knowing what he wants to say. When he turns to walk away, she grabs his hand. She holds it in hers and sighs for what she’s lost. “Before me and the others leave, I would like to spend some time with you.”

She’s unsure even as she says this. She sees the way his eyes shine and, still, she fears he will say no.

But, instead of a rejection, she gets a soft smile and a nod. “Nothing would make me happier,” he answers, and, for the first time, it sounds like he’s speaking to a queen, somber and definitive. Glimmer can’t say she doesn’t like it.

“Go back with aunt Castaspella, I’m going to get some air,” she says. She can tell that he wants to say something else, but, thankfully, he changes his mind and just nods. “And have fun,” she can see his tired eyes, “you deserve it.” She tries to keep his chipped self away from her mind, but she’s unsuccessful. She tries to hide her unease, though, and she must be doing a good job, because he nods.

She looks at his back as he walks back to where he was before coming to speak to her and she sighs. It feels like she’s been sighing the whole night, but there’s nothing she’s going to do about it. She does as she said she would and walks away.

The field they’re at is surrounded by rocks, and it looks nothing like what she’s used to, but she can see a forest not too far. She yearns, and she teleports. She’s glad her powers aren’t limited anymore, it’s liberating, it’s relieving. It’s good that she can feel her magic. She remembers how it had felt in Prime’s ship, the lack of magic. It had been… so weird. She had felt like she couldn’t breathe properly for the whole time, and only getting to Etheria had made it better. Teleporting for the first time had been liberating. It had been proof that she could do it again, that she was full again. That she wasn’t useless.

She is in the forest in a blink. It’s not the Whispering Woods, because there’s nothing like the Whispering Woods, but it reminds her of home, and that’s enough to calm the shaking in her hands. It doesn’t stop, though. It hasn’t stopped all evening. She’s worried, but voicing her concerns makes them real, and she doesn’t want that either. So she sits there, on a root, with her knees drawn to herself and her arms hugging them. She sits there, breathing slowly, hoping to shake the shaking.

She’s not sure of how much time has passed, but someone interrupts her, sitting right in front of her. Bow. It’s always Bow.

“Hi,” he says. He’s smiling at her, and she can tell he’s worried. She smiles at him and she’s sure he can tell that her heart is not into it.

He looks... so normal. Bow has been the one thing that has stayed the same throughout the war. They’ve had their ups and downs, but he’s always been _there_. And then and there he looks like home. He looks like afternoons spent teleporting until she’s empty. He looks like arrows stuck to her wall with cute doodles and short messages. He looks like nights spent in the Whispering Woods looking for adventure. He looks like _her Bow._

She can’t help it. She starts crying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen. This was going to go on another direction. But I just had the best idea ever. Like. It's very small but it means a lot and I'll explain it on the end notes of the last chapter because it's small and I don't think it'll be super obvious, but oh man, I love it.

Bow’s response is instant. He launches to hug her tightly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. It’s obvious that he is worried, and who wouldn’t? They have won and there she is, hiding in the forest, crying.

She doesn’t answer, because she can’t. She can barely breathe properly. Glimmer can’t say she doesn’t know why she’s crying, it would be a blatant disrespect to everything she had lost, to her mother. And, after all, this is Bow. She knows he understands. She knows he’s not going to judge her. She tightens her hold, hugs him like she hasn’t hugged him in a long time.

It takes her a few minutes, but she stops crying, and Bow stops hugging her. He stays close, though, sitting right in front of her, with his big eyes and his soft face. She wants to hug him again, but she refrains from it.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. He must sense that she has more to say, because he doesn’t answer yet. She looks around and keeps her eyes in a tree behind him, purposely not looking at him. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You are sad. We are all sad.”

At that she looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “Have you seen that party?” she asks.

Bow shrugs and takes her hand. “Everyone has lost something to the war,” he tells her. “You have lost… a lot. But others have lost things too. Mermista lost her kingdom. Having this party… It feels like one last victory.”

She frowns. She doesn’t see it. She doesn’t see how a party could be a victory. Not when the real victory happened a few hours ago.

When she looks back at her friend, she can see him looking at her with a small smile. “Having a party means that the Horde hasn’t beaten us, really,” he says. “It’s one more field where we’re winning him.”

Glimmer shrugs. She still can’t see it. She wonders what her people would think if they saw it. Their houses had most likely been destroyed, they had faced incredible danger and there they were, having a _party_.

“We need to have things like this,” he reminded her.

“I know,” was her forceful answer. And she did. She knew. But this felt a little too similar to ignoring everything and that didn’t seem right.

Bow moved so he was sitting next to her and put his head in Glimmer’s shoulder. She was a lot shorter than him, which meant that he was almost lying down. It would have been funny, if the situation had been different.

“You don’t have to celebrate, though,” he says after he has made himself comfortable. “We all deal with everything in different ways, and it’s okay if you don’t find it in yourself to go there and celebrate.”

Her answer is instant. “I can’t.” She feels like she can’t breathe, just for a moment. It’s nothing like what had happened with her dad, it’s more like something out of self-consciousness. Out of the fear that Bow will think she’s less because she doesn’t want to party with the rest. Logically, she knows he would never do something like that to anyone, and even less to Glimmer; her mind, however, doesn’t care about logic, at least there and then.

“It’s okay, Glimmer.”

“No, Bow. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I—”

Before she can’t continue, Bow grabs her hands tightly and makes her look at him. She doesn’t like that they’ve changed their position. She likes Bow with his head in her shoulder. She likes him to be with her. She likes his warmth pressed against her body. She _needs_ to feel him, or it might mean that he’s not really there and she can’t—

“Glimmer!” At the frantic look in his eyes, she wonders if she’s been talking out loud without realizing she had. “I’m not— I’m here, okay? And I’m going to stay here with you.” The sheer determination in his voice let it be clear that he would fight against death itself if it came for him. And it… well, it did wonders to calm her down. “I’m staying here,” he repeated, as the tension left her body. “We’ll stay here in the forest, okay? We can go back there when you want to. Or stay here. Don’t worry, okay?”

“You can go back to the party,” she says. She… She doesn’t want him to leave. But she doesn’t want to be selfish either. She wants him to go back to the party if he wants to. He was having a good time when she’d been there.

“I don’t want to.” He smiles at her again, the softest smile he’s given her yet. “I want to stay with you.”

She sighs and nods. She can’t be sure if he is staying because he really wants to or because he doesn’t want to leave her alone, so she’s going to let herself be a little bit selfish; if he wants to go, she won’t try to convince him otherwise, but he’s not going to try to make him go. She’s too tired to deal with his stubbornness.

He nods and settles himself back next to her. His head makes its way to her shoulder and she feels more comfortable than she’s been in days. Weeks. Years.

“I thought I was going to die,” she says after a few seconds of silence. She hears him stop to breathe for a moment. She’s aware of everything surrounding them. She’s never spoken these words out loud, and she wouldn’t want anybody else to hear them. Just Bow. It’s always Bow. “In Prime’s ship. Catra was there, and sometimes we talked, but I didn’t know…” she sighed. “I could see the good in her then. But I didn’t think she would risk herself to save me.”

Bow lifts his head from her shoulder again. “Glimmer…” He doesn’t know what to say. Of course. She can’t think of what she would say herself if she had been in his place.

She keeps talking. “I wasn’t useful to him. Catra… seemed to be. But I didn’t want to give anything away. I was… expendable.” That last word comes out as a whisper. She can’t bring herself to look at him.

In the back of her mind she things that she hasn’t been looking at him very much since they’d confronted Prime. Only that thought makes her turn to him. He looks worn out. He has bags in his eyes and his hair is messy. She can see a bruise in the back of his neck. He also has tears in his eyes. That brings tears to _her_ eyes.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she confesses. It comes out as a whisper.

He grabs her face and pushes their foreheads together. They do not touch softly, nor they crash hard enough for it to hurt. But it’s hard enough that it’s real. It’s hard enough that they both start crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to take the chapter a bit further, but I like that it ended in a similar way than the first. So yeah. I guess now I only have to make them cry one more time :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Change of plans! I changed the ammount of parts on here! It's going to be 4 parts long now :) The last chapter will be posted soon! I hope you enjoy this one!

“I’m here.” Bow says. His voice is trembling, and Glimmer can’t even answer.

They hug the other closely and she doesn’t know about him, but she can’t bear the thought of letting go. Not right now. Not when she’s thinking about all that they’ve lost. Not when… Not now.

They stay like that for a while. The sun actually goes down, but they don’t stop holding each other. At least they’re not crying now. They stopped a while ago, but still, Glimmer doesn’t want to let go, and she thinks Bow doesn’t either.

They hear giggles and leaves ruffling and moments later Adora and Catra stumble into their view. They are both smiling, probably giddy after reuniting and _finally_ being safe. They stop when they see Glimmer and Bow. Both couples look at each other for a couple of seconds.

“Well, seems like someone is already here,” Catra says in her slow voice. Then points somewhere to the right. “Better go that way.”

She starts walking away, but Adora grabs the back of her shirt and pulls her back.

“Are you guys okay?” she asks, hesitantly.

Glimmer can imagine how they look. Red eyes and tear tracks in their cheeks. They must seem crazy. Of course Adora would be worried. After everything that had happened, she had every right to.

“Yeah,” Glimmer said, her voice rough after all that crying. “Just… overwhelming.”

Adora looks uncomfortable for a moment, and Glimmer is brought back to the past, when Adora had so much trouble to express her emotions after the Horde had tried to end them. But, still, this is their Adora, so she walks to them and hugs them too.

“And why are we crying?” she asks.

Bow is rubbing Adora’s shoulder and Glimmer is holding her hand.

“Glimmer wasn’t sure she would make it,” Bow whispers. Adora gasps and looks at her with a frown. Then, they hear a few leaves ruffling and, when they look back, Catra is gone.

“Shit,” Adora swears under her breath. “I’m sorry about her, she’s not good with feelings.”

In another time, Glimmer would have poked fun at her, she would have made a comment more meant to hurt than as a joke. But Catra had been at Prime’s ship too. She had been there and she had faced worse things. It was because of Catra that Glimmer had gotten to Bow and Adora safely. So, instead of making a jab, she nods.

“It’s okay,” she says, her eyes fixed into the bushes Catra had when through. “It must be hard for her too.”

Adora is also looking in that direction, with the face of a lost puppy.

“You can go with her,” Glimmer adds. “She might need company.”

“Catra is more the type to sulk alone,” Adora answers, even though it’s obvious that she wants to go after her girlfriend. “I’ll look for her later, when she’s had some time alone.”

Glimmer doesn’t comment on it, because it’s Adora who knows Catra, but she can’t imagine that she would like to be alone. She… If Bow and Adora left right now she would break, that’s something she knows for sure.

“I hope she’s okay,” mutters Bow, also looking at the bushes.

Glimmer lets out a small laugh. “Look at us, worrying about _Catra_.” She sighs. “I still can’t believe this is all… done. We won.”

Adora grabs her face and makes her look at her. “We won,” she tells her, slowly and clearly. “We won and now we’re safe. Etheria is safe.” It seems as if she’s not only telling Glimmer, but also herself. “Everyone is safe now.”

Glimmer shakes her hold on her cheeks and moves to hug her tightly. “We are safe,” she tells her, she reassures her.

This time, Bow doesn’t say anything, but he does hugs them. It seems so unreal that they’ve won… The war with the Horde has lasted so long, longer than what Glimmer has been alive, and to see it end… She can’t really believe it, none of them can.

“Hey, guys, you disappeared from the party!” says a voice from behind them.

Glimmer looks up and sees the rest of the princesses there. They have lost so much too… As Frosta moves and sits next to her – pushing Adora away, not that any of them care that much – Glimmer can’t stop thinking of all the sacrifices they’ve made, all nine of them. She feels Bow moving to press his side to hers, and she thinks of Catra; they have all made sacrifices.

The rest of the princesses sit with them too, forming a circle.

They stay in silence for a few moments. That’s a first in the Princess Alliance, to have them all here a to be so silent at the same time. Glimmer had thought she would like to have a moment like this, back when they were all been talking over each other planning attacks on the Horde. Now there is no Horde, but the Princess Alliance is still there, they will still fight if needed.

She can’t hold back her smile.

“I’m glad we’re all here,” she ends up saying.

She looks at all of them. Scorpia is blushing, same as Perfuma, and it doesn’t scape Glimmer’s notice that they are holding hands, or, well, hand and pincer. Mermista has her usual bored face, but, at this point, it’s obvious that it’s all a façade, just like with Sea-Hawk. Spinnerella and Netossa are also holding hands, they haven’t stopped touching each other since Prime fell, and Glimmer can see why. Adora is alternating her eyes between the princesses and the forest, as she always is, one half with them, one with Catra. Glimmer wants to tell her to go after her, but, deep down, she doesn’t want her to leave them. Entrapta is playing with a leave that was in the floor, more destroying it than anything else. She doesn’t look so comfortable around them, and Glimmer wants to change that. She… She can’t say she understands what she has been feeling, why she joined the Horde, but she knows Entrapta is not a bad person, she knows she’s kind, and she knows she has done everything she could to help them, to help _her_. Glimmer can only be thankful that she didn’t bring Hordak to the forest, she can’t imagine how she would have reacted if he was there.

“I’m glad…” she sighs. “I’m glad that we formed the Alliance. And I thank you all for your help. For everything that you’ve done.”

They are all looking at her and, for the first time in a while, she feels like a queen, like they queen that she is, really.

“I’m glad we are all okay,” Entrapta says, breaking the silence that had formed after Glimmer’s words.

She’s surprised that it is Entrapta who talks first.

“I’m glad better times are coming,” Perfuma says, smiling softly. After saying this, she looks down at where Scorpia and her are holding hand-and-pincer.

“I’m glad we can rebuild everything,” Scorpia says. She seems to feel uncomfortable too, just a little bit. It must be something similar to Entrapta. Or to Catra. To think that someone as sweet as Scorpia had been part of the Horde…

“I’m glad we all became friends,” says Frosta. She’s the youngest of them, and the loneliest, it seems. Or she was until now. Glimmer is older than her, and she can’t stomp down her mothering instincts, not with Frosta, but she will also be her friend. She’s honored to be her friend.

“I’m glad we got our people back,” Netossa says. She’s looking at Spinnerella. They look at each other for a few moments and then hug tightly. Glimmer can’t even imagine what she would have done if Bow had been chipped. Her father had been but… well, in the end he was still a stranger, it was not the same as Netossa and Spinnerella. She can imagine Adora must feel something like that, though, after everything that had happened with Catra.

“I’m glad to be back with you,” answers Spinnerella. As she says this, she’s looking just at her wife, but then she turns and looks at all of them, “all of you.”

“Ugh, I guess I’m glad that we’re all okay,” Mermista says, rolling her eyes. Glimmer, and the rest of the princesses too, acts like she can’t see the tears in her eyes.

“I’m also glad I got to punch things,” Frosta says, after a few moments of silence. It breaks the tension, and they all laugh.

Bow takes her hand in his, and they look at each other for a few seconds. All is well. They are safe. They’re planet is safe. And they are closer than ever.

And again, Glimmer feels the tears come to her eyes, but this time is different, these are happy tears, they are hopeful tears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I'm sorry it took me *so* long to post this!! I had written the "skeleton" of the chapter and it felt like it was finished and I couldn't add anything more, but then I reread it and added stuff along the way so it was longer and... more detailed/finished. So here we are. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> In the notes at the end of the chapter I tell you about the eureka moment that I had and that makes the structure of this thing :)

They are sitting there, laughing and joking. It feels… normal, even. It feels normal in a situation where everything seems weird. A situation where they are safe.

They hear the ruffling that means that something is coming, and they all turn to look who it is. Even now that they are safe, Glimmer is aware of how tense everyone becomes. The Horde has been defeated, and still, they are all waiting for something bad to happen. It doesn’t, not this time. To Glimmer’s surprise, it’s Catra. Just Catra. Catra who is now on the good side. Catra who is with her father. And Sea-Hawk, apparently. Adora brightens up, and even motions Catra to her side. Sea-Hawk doesn’t think twice before sitting next to Mermista, who rolls her eyes as if nobody could see how she takes the man’s hand in hers. Her father, though, hovers, unsure.

“Hi,” she says smiling, opening up the door that now, sadly, needs to be opened.

She wishes that there was no need for a door to be opened. She wishes that her father hadn’t been taken from her. She wishes she knew how to be around him now, after everything that has happened. But she doesn’t know.

She’s talking softly, as if he were a frightened horse, because she really doesn’t know how to deal with this situation, but her best bet is to treat him with all the softness he has been deprived from for so many years. She realizes, once she’s seeing him, that she wants him there. After such a long time being apart, she wants him to be here, in the forest, laughing about the same stupid things all the other princesses are laughing at. She wants him to tell the horrible jokes that she remembers him liking so much. She wants to see him without the tension in his shoulders that he’s been carrying for oh so many years.

She wants him to know there’s a space for him, that, no matter how much time has passed, not matter what has happened, there’s still a place for him. She wants him to know that she still wants him with her.

He smiles hesitantly at her. He takes the opening that she’s given him with bright, sad eyes. “Hi.”

“I figured you would want him here,” Catra says, gruffly. They all turn to her. “What” she demands, defensively.

Glimmer smiles at her. “Thank you,” she tells her.

She wants to hug her tightly, but she thinks Catra might scratch her eye out this time, so she refrains from it. Catra likes to think that she’s bad and tough but, as Glimmer gets to know her better, she can see how much of that is just a front. She tries to protect herself from harm with stone barriers and frowns. Glimmer can see this as what it is: the acknowledge of family needing to stick together, the realization that, now, Catra is one of them. She feels her smile getting bigger, and if she doesn’t turn away, she might even start crying. She doesn’t think Catra would react very well to that either, considering her feeling constipation. She has hope that, with help from people that know how to deal with all the trauma, Catra will get better, than she’ll loosen enough to face… well, feelings.

She turns to her father, not wanting to overwhelm Catra in any way. “And thank you for coming,” she tells him. She motions to the free space between Sea-Hawk and Netossa, both of whom are smiling at King Micah. “Please, sit with us.”

She wants to specifically tell him that he’s wanted there, but she thinks that might be a little bit too much for now, a little bit too direct. She doesn’t want to overwhelm him, but she needs him to know that she wants him, she needs him to know that all this time hasn’t made it so she doesn’t want him in her life. She knows that, in his place, she would probably be having all those doubts. She knows that she would have all these doubts, and she doesn’t want him to question his place with her. She doesn’t want to lose him again because she didn’t stress her need for his companionship enough.

He smiles and nods. He sits with them and the air is a little bit tense until Bow cracks a bad joke that makes everyone groan and start telling _good_ jokes. She squeezes his hand once, thankful for the effort of moving the attention away from them. He squeezes back.

She notices Micah, her dad, watching them. For a fraction of a second, she fears that he will say something, that he will have the thought that he can dictate her life just because she’s his daughter, and he is back in her life. She… she really doesn’t know him. She doesn’t how he rules. She doesn’t know what to expect from him. She doesn’t know what power he thinks he has over her. She just doesn’t know. She has faith that the man Queen Angella loved so much couldn’t be a bad man who thought he had power over individual choices like love. But she doesn’t know, and she fears his reaction.

But he doesn’t say anything. He just smiles sadly. She thinks he might be thinking about her mother, and that thought makes _her_ think of Queen Angella. If only she was there to see them win… But she wasn’t. And, ultimately, it was Glimmer’s fault.

She looks down at her and Bow’s hands. She doesn’t want to go down on that path, at least not when everyone is there. She doesn’t want to keep crying. She doesn’t want to seem so… affected in front of everyone. There have been enough tears from her, at least for today.

Fighting the tears is difficult, but to show everyone how affected she is, seems like it would be letting Horde Prime winning that battle, and the last thing she wants is to let that fascist win anything over her. So she fight the tears. She promises herself she will work on everything wrong with her and the way she’s thinking. She promises she won’t have the double standards of not blaming anyone in the Resistance for anything, but still blame herself for every single one of their loses.

She notices how Catra is looking at them too, and she makes a point of not looking at her. If she had expected anyone to bring her father, Catra had definitely not been it. She wonders how that had worked in the woman’s head. She doesn’t owe Glimmer anything, but, with everything that has happened, it makes sense that she thinks she has to do anything to gain the favor of the princesses. She already has Glimmer’s, and it is quite obvious that she does.

Maybe, and it’s just a slight possibility, Catra has seen that Glimmer and her father are trying and that, still, their relationship is very tense and maybe she had wanted to help.

Or maybe she had simply been on her way back and had crossed paths with him and he had followed her. She’s the less convinced of this last option, but it’s still a possibility.

She decides to not give any more thought. She stays in the moment and enjoys the feeling on fresh air around her, the feeling of her friend’s happiness surrounding her. If, once they are all going to bed, she seeks Catra and gives her a hug that leaves both of them teary-eyed, that’s nobody’s business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each chapter represents a moment of Glimmers life, kinda. At first it's just her. Then it's her and Bow. Then Adora and Catra, but Catra is not really there so she leaves. Then the princesses, then Catra and her father. It's structured to represent Glimmer's companions throughout the show. I don't know if it was well done but hey, that was my intention.  
> Also. Sea-Hawk is the exception to this lol.

**Author's Note:**

> This might end up being longer than 3 chapters, but I don't know yet.
> 
> \- follow me on [tumblr](https://persephx.tumblr.com/) -


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